Huge toy giveaway from SpanglishBaby

Here's a shoutout to SpanglishBaby--run over there and be sure to enter their awesome giveaway of bilingual toys from Ingenio!

Oh, and don't forget to follow them on Twitter, @Spanglishbaby.

A case for avoiding "pet" grammar

My baby's been occupying a whole lot of my time lately, draining the life from my blogging and twittering, but in the grand scheme of priorities, she's above my blog, sorry. ;-)  But now that potty training is going more smoothly I'll make a concerted effort to get back into things.

Way too long ago I saw a few tweets from some Twitter friends, also Spanish teachers, retweeting and agreeing with this post about how students in U.S. Spanish classes should learn the vosotros.  It caused a twinge of guilt in me, I'll admit, because I don't teach the vosotros.  We call it "that y'all -ais isteis ending they use in Spain" every once in a while when it comes up in conversation, but I don't explicitly teach it, not even in AP Spanish. Why? Because I like to think I'm on a mission to get my students communicative in the comparatively tiny amount of time I have, and vosotros isn't part of it.  But what if they're right? What if I'm cheating them out of something, just because never in my Spanish-speaking 20 years have I ever used or needed the vosotros form?  So, I thought, I'll ask.  I do have one student in my six years of teaching who did study abroad in Spain. Also, my colleague who teaches lower-level Spanish with me studied abroad in Spain.  I'll ask them.  My colleague told me that she thought it's a good idea to introduce it so they can recognize it when they see it, but other than that it's more or less a waste of time.  As for my former student, here's what she told me via facebook message:
"Having spent time in Spain I think I would still agree with you that spending a lot of time teaching vosotros isn't really needed. I think as long as you told your students what it is and maybe went over some of the verbs like ir, comer, and hablar to give them an idea of how it works. I think the best explanation of it is to tell them it is the form the Spaniards use for y'all."

Whew, mental forehead wipe.  So the two people I know who might have told me I'd been cheating my students reassured me that as long as they know what it is, it's not a big deal if they can't really use it.

What makes me think this even more is the Latin American use of vos.  I had friends in Texas who regularly used the preterite conjugation of vosotros with me as a conjugation of vos, which isn't taught in any textbook.  What about that?

This got me thinking more about pet grammar and about my own shortcomings.  How much time do we as teachers spend teaching stuff that's just uncommunicative junk that doesn't matter?  Take me, for instance.  Would you believe that at the beginning of this year I actually spend a few days and a good part of a test teaching and evaluating the presence or absence of the definite article before a qualified or unqualified profession word? I mean, come on! (If you're as lost as you should be, what I mean is, 'él es abogado' vs. 'él es un buen abogado'.)  Where in the grand scheme of communicative language teaching did I need to waste time on that?

Another example: I distinctly remember having to memorize in college a list of the country words in Spanish and which ones typically did or did not take the definite article.  I remember memorizing that you have to use la Argentina instead of just Argentina.  Fast forward to now when I regularly read news articles in Spanish on website and see en Argentina, de Argentina, desde Argentina. Wait, where, what? Why did I memorize that again?

Let me hit a little closer to home--verb conjugations.  Oh how we love to drill them, practice them, mark them wrong, am I right?  A few weeks ago Laura Pausini put on her twitter feed @officialpausini that she wanted people to donate to Haiti or Chile earthquake relief, can't remember which, and "yo también lo hizo." ¿Hizo? Sure, you say, but Laura is actually Italian.  But she speaks Spanish quite fluently and makes more money singing in Spanish than in Italian.

But let's talk native Spanish speakers.  My students and I were doing some class activities regarding the wave of violence in Ciudad Juárez and watched some videos, including one showing a protest sign that read "Señor Presidente, hasta que encuentremos el culpable..." What a minor detail, that stem change that shouldn't be there in an -ar subjunctive, but I remember how much we studied those little details.

Pet grammar.  If it's your goal, fine, but I'd argue that's when you're really cheating your students--cheating them of the opportunity to be communicative.  Grammatical accuracy comes with a whole lot of time and comprehensible input, and in the meantime, why not just have fun with communication?  My most communicative students are the ones whose verb accuracy is all over the place, but their affective filters are low and they're willing to experiment and have fun and just lay it out there and try it and negotiate meaning.  One of them just won first place in level 4 oral proficiency at the district language festival and I can assure you my college Spanish professor would be appalled at her verb accuracy.  But when she goes to a restaurant and tries her best to chat about whatever she can think of, I can assure you the people there couldn't care less.

Authentic audio with future tense

I found a recent broadcast from Radio ONU (incidentally a great source for AP Spanish audio) that uses several verbs in the future tense because it's about a future meeting of a group discussing what they want to do about the H1N1 virus.  Current event + grammar = :o)

My favorite thing to do with these is to print the script (which is what the link will take you to), black out the target features (whether verbs or vocabulary or whatever) and copy the script, and then play the audio several times and use it as a type of cloze quiz.  I combined this with a few other future activities (a song and 2 news articles) so they were finding a total of 22 verbs, but 2 of the verbs in this audio (reunir and evaluar) they're not terribly familiar with, so I made the quiz grade worth 20 pts.  The highest grade I got was 20/20, and I only got 1 of those out of 13 students.  My lowest was 17/20, just to give you an idea.

Interesting blog post about iPod as language lab

I got a link to this blog post over my Twitter feed from @techforschools and had to share.  It's called "iPod Touch as Language Lab."

A couple of years ago I saw a language lab rep at a conference and of course got all in a tizzy about language labs.  He hasn't visited my school yet but I talked to my admins about having him in and I got an estimate - $27,000 for 14 stations.  I was basically told to keep dreaming, but that was fine; I at least wanted them to know I wanted one in case someone designated a large gift to the school for foreign language (I teach at a private school).

Then I started thinking about how I could turn our laptop computer lab into a listening lab with microphones and software.  But we have computer classes in there in the afternoon, and I can't take my classes there, which is a significant obstacle.  Then we thought, well, what we really need is a mobile laptop lab, but because of our elevator/stairs situation, it would only be usable by part of our school.  Not a great option either.

So now I'm nearly sold on the idea of having a set of iPods to use as sort of a mobile computer lab.  I've decided I need to be really crazy about an idea and know enough about it to conduct training on it to really get serious about asking to allocate funds for it, but the more posts I see like this, the more crazy I become.

It's a good sort of loca though.

News article: appeal + subjunctive for influence

Popping in quickly to share an article with a lot of youth appeal (I mean, it has juventud in the article) and some subjunctive for influence.


You'll find it here on univision.com.

A high-interest exercise for imperfect/pasado continuo

In my class, my students know that I don't care if they know what imperfect or preterite means. Often we call them descriptive past and sudden past, because that's the best way in my opinion to contrast them.  The trick with putting them together is to get students to use one when they're describing ongoing action and switch to the other when they want to say what happened.  We do a story, where they fill in the details, in which our two characters were going somewhere (a birthday party for the horse's mother) in some way (on an airplane) doing something (eating chocolate straws) with someone else doing something (Miley Cyrus not wearing enough clothing) when something happens (the plane fell) and while that was happening other things happened (the people screamed, the horse pushed Miley Cyrus out of the plane).

I thought about using children's books as a follow-up exercise, having them describe what was happening on the page.  I did that very quickly at the end of a class, as an oral activity, and I pushed them to make the exercise very rapid so they didn't have time to get bored, but I thought, if I do this again they're going to get bored with it as a writing exercise.  But it's almost March Madness.  We live in KY where basketball is king. I have 2 girls who will probably have a volleyball scholarship in college.  I've been hyping up the upcoming World Cup. What if I find amazing sports videos, culturally relevant, in Spanish, to use instead?

So these are what we found.  Manu Ginobli, the most accomplished Latin American basketball player ever, beats Serbia & Montenegro at the buzzer in the 2004 Olympics (make sure your students watch the clock & the score box).  The USA scores on a fabulous corner kick in a World Cup qualifier vs. Mexico. Peru's volleyball team makes an amazing play in their bid for a spot in the 2010 World Championship games in Japan after their star actually kicks the ball--I didn't even know that was legal.

We watched the videos through, used sudden past to say what happened in the big moment of the game, and then paused the video in different areas.  We named some random person on the screen, and each student had to use the continuous past (our focus of the week) to say qué estaba haciendo esa persona. We did this 3 or 4 times for each video and I took the writing as a daily grade. It worked beautifully.  My students could have watched the videos a dozen times so they didn't even care that they were technically doing a grammar writing exercise.

Here are the videos:

A song with 17 verbs in past subjunctive

Past subjunctive is not the easiest thing to find in a song, much less several repetitions of it.  I blogged a bit about a couple of songs that do it, but I this song just crossed my radar and wow, what a gem for past subjunctive.  It has 17 verbs in the past subjunctive, 8 of them unique.  They're almost all part of unreal if clauses, and the cool thing is that you can see the use of the concept without the actual word 'if,' something that's not taught in textbooks. (Again, textbooks fail us.)

As an added benefit, you have 'quiera' as  subjunctive by reason of indefinite antecedent (for a better song for that, see this post).  Thanks Carlos Vives (@carlosylaprovin on Twitter) for injecting some fun in one of the hardest concepts in the Spanish language.

Como Tú

Carlos Vives

Tú no sabes lo que diera
si me vieras y dijeras tú,
que no sabes que yo quiero
que mi vida la quisieras tú,
si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú,
que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

Como tú, la primavera.
Como tú, la vez primera.
No haya nadie que me quiera.
Como tú, mi vida entera.

Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.
Tú, tú, tú, mi vida entera.

Me perdonas si yo insisto,
que mi vida la quisieras tú.
Que de todas las estrellas
que yo he visto, la más linda, tú.
Si supieras que me gustan
son las cosas que prefieres tú.
Que quisiera que los hijos
que tengamos fueran como tú.

(coro otra vez)

Si las noticias fueran como tú.
Y las ciudades fueran como tú.
Y si las calles fueran como tú.
Y si mi jefe fuera como tú.
Y si mi vida fuera como tú.
Y mis canciones fueran como tú.
Y si la guerra fuera como tú,

No habría problema todos como tú

(coro y tag otra vez)

My corporate Spanish links, all in one place

I just tagged on my Delicious all the Spanish-language corporate websites that I've mentioned on my blog.  It makes it a lot more convenient to find the sites that my students have found interesting.  You can find it here:

http://delicious.com/wandermami/Corporate_Spanish_sites

"Adora la Exploradora"-the week we didn't feel like a boring past-tense review

Last week it was time to start reviewing how the two past tenses work together, and I just didn't feel like the usual diagrams, writing exercises, prompted conversations, etc.  So now that we have our Flip cameras, I told the students to write a movie script.  They had to use both past tenses, and they had to use every subject at least once.  We have a student whose name in my class is Adora, and they had the idea to make "Adora la exploradora." They started making this student Backpack, that student Grandma, and the ideas kept flying.  I think it turned out super fun.  We're going to be filming today and tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it!  I wish I could post the video, but I don't post pictures or video of my students on public websites.

After the first day, the video was planned all in Spanish.  Also, two separate classes did the planning and will be filming the same way.  In Word the diacritical marks were all there and correct, but they didn't copy/paste here.

Enjoy!

GUIÓN


Narrador: Adora y Boots salieron de su casa, porque ellos querían ir a la casa de los abuelos de Adora y comer galletas. Antes de que salieran, buscaron al Mapa.

Adora y Boots: Hola Mapa!

Mapa: Soy el Mapa (10x)Bosque, puente, montaña, casa de abuelos. Díganlo conmigo. Bosque, puente, montaña, casa de abuelos. (2x)

Narrador: Adora y Boots lo dijeron.

Narrador: Cuando salieron de la casa, caminaron al bosque espantoso y entonces llegaron. Adora vio a Swiper! ¡Ay de nosotros!

Swiper(salta del bosque):

Adora y Boots: ¡Swiper no robes! ¡Swiper no robes!

Narrador: Pero Swiper le robó la chamarra a Boots.

Swiper: Demasiado tarde. JAJAJA.

Adora y Boots: ¡Ay de nosotros!

Narrador: La buscaron y no la encontraron. Así que corrieron al puente. Adora y Boots llegaron al puente y el trol les cerró el paso. y No pudieron pasar.

Adora y Boots: ¡Por favor! ¡Necesitamos pasar e ir a la casa de mis abuelos ahorita o las galletas estarán frías! ¡Trajimos la ardilla, Tico, en nuestra mochila para ayudar a comer las galletas!

Trol: No quiero que ustedes pasen, pero si resuelven la adivinanza pueden pasar. Este es la adivinanza: -Tengo frío y calor y no frío sin calor.-

Adora y Boots: Hmmmmmm.

Tico: ¡Yo sé! ¡Yo sé!

Adora y Boots: ¿Qué?

Tico: ¡Sartén!

Trol: Respondiste correctamente. Tristemente… Tristemente… Tuve hambre.

Adora y Boots: Eres muy inteligente, Tico. Te amamos.

Tico: No los amo. Lo siento.

Adora y Boots: ¡Grrrrr! ¡Sal! Pero gracias para la solución. Adiós.

Narrador: Adora y Boots caminaron sobre el puente muy rápido y subieron la Montaña Vegas donde se dieron con el toro.

Adora y Boots: ¡Hola Benny!

Benny: ¡Hola Adora! ¡Hola Boots! Estoy comiendo mi almuerzo. Me alegra verlos porque no los veo hace mucho tiempo.

Adora: Tenemos un problema. Necesitamos buscar a Swiper porque le robó la chamarra de Boots.

Boots: Estoy muy triste. Quiero mi chamarra. Mi amigo Tico me la dio para mi cumpleaños pasado. Es mi favorita.

Adora: ¿Has visto a Swiper o la chamarra de Boots?

Benny: Yo sé dónde está la chamarra.

Boots: ¿DÓNDE ESTA? Yo la quiero.

Benny: Swiper la tiró en el árbol. Porque la chamarra no le quedaba muy bien.

Boots y Adora: ¿Dónde está el árbol?

Benny: Pregúntenle al mapa.

Mochila: Yo lo tengo.

Mapa: ¡Aquí estoy!

Adora y Boots: Mapa, ¿Dónde está el árbol?

Mapa: Allí (Señala con el dedo)

Narrador: Adora y Boots se apresuraron al árbol y consiguieron la chamarra. Entonces, Adora y Boots fueron a la casa de abuelos.

Los Abuelos y Diego: ¡Adora y Boots! ¡Nos hicieron falta!

Adora y Boots: ¡Hola! ¿Como han estado?

Los Abuelos: Muy bien y muy cansado pero hicimos galletas para Uds.

Diego: ¿Qué de yo?

Los Abuelos: Ok. (a Adora y Boots)Compartan con Diego.

Adora y Boots y Diego: ¡Ñum Ñum Ñum DELICIOSAS!

Adora y Boots: (a audiencia) ¡Gracias por ayudarnos! ¡ADIOS!

EL FIN!!!!!!!!

My level 1 and 2 stories (for Bethanie, and whomever else)

A little while ago I made a post about pleasure reading that elicited a few comments from Bethanie:

Bethanie said...

Could you elaborate on what you do with the reading guides/palabras claves? I would like to incorporate more long reading into my classes in addition to the shorter pieces I already use, but struggle with some of the same things you mentioned.

Also, if you could select books for levels 1 and 2, what would you pick?

Thanks!

24 November, 2009 21:08

Sarita said...

Hi Bethanie! Now I just hand the students the guides/palabras claves and they turn them in on the due date. A couple of tips that are important, I think, are 1) to reduce frustration, read together at first to teach them how to find the important things without looking up every word (make sure you understand subject/verb, leave the sentence as soon as you have the gist of it, leave the paragraph as soon as you have the gist, understand every part of a sentence when you know the answer to a ? is there); 2) give them the page numbers of the answers to the questions and make sure they're chronological; 3) give a list of high-frequency words from the chapter that they're not likely to know; and 4) rehash the chapter in a TPRS/circling way when they turn in the guide to gauge who understood what.
As for books for lower levels, have you seen the TPRS books by Blaine Ray et al? You can start here. Good luck!

25 November, 2009 16:07

Bethanie said...

Hi Sarita,
Thanks for your response. I have a few of the Blaine Ray novels, and I think they are a great idea to consider. I find teaching this type of reading to be a greater challenge at the lower levels (1-2) than at the upper levels (3+), so I appreciate the ideas that you've shared.

01 December, 2009 22:47

When I first started giving my students stories with comprehension questions as assessment, I remember wishing there were more available for free on the internet, especially for lower-level students. I'm still not aware of anyone publishing or offering such stories on the internet, but at least I'd like to offer mine to Bethanie and anyone else who wants to use them. A few notes about them:
1-I believe that students pay more attention with a lower affective filter (and therefore acquire more) if the stories are interesting, funny, weird, or all of the above.
2-Long stories are frustrating so none is longer than 1 page.
3-Sorry for any mistakes/misprints. Feel free to make them your own.
4-They deliberately use vocabulary my students learned in that particular quarter. You may want to replace words to match your students' vocabulary.
5-The stories that are one page long with questions on the other page, I scored as tests.
6-There are a couple of stories I wrote for them to answer questions on (quiz grade) and then they filled in blanks with different details to make the story their own (daily grade) and exchanged with another student(s) who answered the questions based on the new story (quiz grade).

Level 1 stories
Level 2 stories

Hope you find them useful!